The most powerful biz journalist online

Laura Stampler of Business Insider profiles LinkedIn executive editor Daniel Roth, the former Fortune magazine business journalist whom she calls the most powerful business journalist online.

Stampler writes, “Roth oversees the news on LinkedIn Today, a social aggregator that brings top business headlines to LinkedIn’s 175 million-plus members across 40 different industries.

“‘One of the things I noticed at Fortune [where he worked previously] is that we did articles that I thought were amazing articles; and you’d read the comments, and the right people were never commenting on the story,’ Roth told BI. Rather than good critiques, like a real estate developer slamming the concept behind a Fannie Mae foreclosure piece, Roth would find trolls extolling ‘You guys are liberal jerks/conservative jerks/you guys are idiots, or even, my sister makes $500/month stuffing envelopes, here’s how you can do it.’

“His job is to make sure that the right news gets to the right people, which is a win-win for readers and reporters. And as much as journalists love their stories being seen by their intended audience, they also love another bonus effect from LinkedIn Today placement: Traffic.

Chris Roush is the Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.